Pious Ali, a Portland city councilor, is an advocate for immigrants, social equity and racial equity.

Every election season brings disagreements about taxes, housing, public safety, education and the role of government. Those debates are healthy. Democracy depends on them. What is less healthy is the temptation to manufacture threats where none exist and ask voters to choose between values that have never actually been in conflict.

Recently, a gubernatorial candidate proposed a plan to combat what he calls the “Islamification of Maine.” The premise rests on a false choice: that Mainers must somehow decide between preserving the rule of law and protecting religious freedom, between public safety and welcoming neighbors, between American values and Muslim Americans.

That choice does not exist.

The Constitution of the United States and the laws of the state of Maine already govern our courts, our public institutions and our civic life. They apply equally to everyone regardless of faith, ethnicity, race or national origin. No religious tradition supersedes American law.

Nor is there any serious movement seeking to replace it. Building a political campaign around that premise is not a solution to a real problem. It is an attempt to transform fear into a governing philosophy.

Americans have seen this before.

At different moments in our history, politicians warned that Catholics could not be trusted because their loyalty supposedly belonged to Rome. Jewish Americans were portrayed as outsiders. Chinese immigrants were depicted as threats to American culture and jobs. Japanese Americans were treated as security risks.

Right here in Maine, French Canadian mill workers who built the backbone of our textile and paper industries were viewed with suspicion, accused of being too foreign, too Catholic and too different to ever truly belong. New waves of immigrants from Latin America, Africa and elsewhere were accused of changing the nation beyond recognition.

And after Sept. 11, Muslim and Arab Americans were cast as suspects in their own country, their faith treated as evidence of disloyalty rather than as the personal and protected belief it has always been. History has not been kind to those predictions.

What has consistently strengthened America is not exclusion but the expansion of opportunity and belonging. Our nation’s greatest achievements have come when we widened the circle of participation rather than narrowed it.

As an American, an immigrant, a Muslim and an elected official, I understand that public service requires accountability. Every person who calls Maine home must respect the law. Every organization must operate within it. Every public official must be committed to public safety. But accountability should be based on conduct, not identity. It should address actual threats, not imagined ones.

Meanwhile, Maine faces challenges that are very real.

Families are struggling to find affordable housing. Employers across the state face persistent workforce shortages. Rural communities are searching for economic opportunity. Young people wonder whether they can afford to stay. Municipalities are confronting infrastructure needs, climate challenges and rising costs.

Those are the issues keeping Mainers awake at night.

The question before us is straightforward: Should we spend our energy solving those problems, or searching for enemies among our neighbors?

Leadership requires more than identifying people to fear. It requires bringing people together to tackle difficult challenges. It requires offering solutions rather than scapegoats. And it requires the confidence that our values are strong enough to withstand diversity, disagreement and change.

Maine has always been at its best when it welcomes people willing to contribute, work hard and become part of the community. We are a state that prides itself on common sense, fairness and neighborliness. We should not abandon those traditions for the politics of suspicion.

The future of Maine will not be secured by dividing Mainers against one another. It will be secured by building a state where everyone is held to the same laws, afforded the same rights and given the same opportunity to contribute to our shared future.

That is not a partisan principle. It is an American one.